The Yeshiva Brawl - The Amalekite In The Jew - Superbowl Sunday And It's Implications - Wild Donkeys

I was asked to comment on the "brawl" that broke out in a well known yeshiva in Eretz Yisrael. How can it be that yeshiva boys act like hooligans? We are ALL bothered by this.

I have a lot to say and won't say it for my other responsibilities beckon [i.e. a man must learn and I am a man so logically it emerges that I must learn:-). Thanks Aristotle - or was it Plato -  for that one]. In a nutshell my comments....

Part 1

The news sites got it all wrong!!! It is false!

The implication is that in other yeshivos there is no violence. Ohhh, there is. We call it מלחמתה של תורה - The War of Torah. Tens of thousands of boys and men arguing until their deaths about the correct interpretation of G-d's holy law. Every day, in every yeshiva in the world. That is the ordinary reality everywhere. Why don't the news sites pick up, that Rav Berel Povarsky Shlita, the Rosh Yeshiva of Ponivitch, answered a BOMB KASHYA of the Pnei Yehoshua that has never been heard before. Or that Rav Baruch Mordechai Ezrachi had an approach to a Tosfos that answered NINE different questions at once. After shiur the boys were so enthralled that they danced together and hugged! Why isn't THAT on every Jewish new site like the "brawl" was?

ANSWER: Because it is not DIRT and new sites thrive on DIRT. Journalism in general looks for the abnormal and tries to present it as normal. There are loads of article on homosexual issues but very few on heterosexual issues - unless the hetero behavior is abnormal. What is interesting about an article about a couple that is living happily and modestly together for 30 years? The only way to get into the paper is to do something really rotten like make one's wife an aguna or abuse her [chas vi-shalom]. Papers - and blogs, LOVE that stuff. It keeps the hit counter moving and the commenters commenting [good for advertising revenue] and the papers selling. Dirt sells.

So remember, next time you click on "The ...." or "The ..." [don't want to get sued for libel:-)] you are putting your head in the gutter. The nature of the gutter is that when one puts anything there it gets dirty......

PART 2

IF YOU DON'T LIKE MUSSAR PLEASE STOP READING. YOU WON'T LIKE THIS!:-)

I didn't read about what happened. I vaguely heard about it and received an email from a boy asking me how such a thing could happen. It is a mammoth chillul Hashem and I will not defend it. Machlokes is an aveira from the Torah [לא תהיה כקרח ועדתו - ויש אומרים שהוא אסמכתא בעלמא עי' בס' בציר אביעזר של הרב שביב שמנתח את הדעות השונות] and is the only aveira that is called "gehenom" [Maharal]. Really bad.

What About Me?

But why focus on the faults of others when I am sooooo filled with my own personal deficiencies?! The sfarim talk about the little Amalek that is in every JEW. Amalek is the personification of evil on earth. When I honestly and candidly peer into my own soul I found a loooot of evil. Bad middos. You might not know because I cover it up really well so that I will be socially accepted but it festers within and sometimes even rears its ugly head.

Bad Middos - The Ten Commandments

The middah of anger is one that leads to murder. Do I ever get MAD? Do you? Why does the Torah in the most important part [if I may says that] say "Don't kill". Because potentially, there is a killer in all of us until we purify ourselves. Imagine you really can't stand someone [your boss, your business competitor] and you could make them disappear by just saying "kaboo". Nobody would ever find out and you wouldn't feel guilty afterwards and let's say it was permitted according to halacha - would you do it? Many people would. There is a little rotzeach in many off us. We just don't want to go to jail or know that we would would feel guilty afterwards so it's just not worth it.

Why does the Torah say לא תנאף - Because there is a little "noef" in all of us. Most of us don't do it because we are afraid of getting caught by our wives, society or G-d but if we could do it free of fears then we would. THAT is why we are so often מנאף in our thoughts and sights. Gazing at an attractive woman and feeling that "guy feeling" we all experience, is a subtle form of "nee-uf". [Isn't it GREAT that nobody knows what goes on in our minds?:-)]

I love you - sorry, but those are the facts.

What about football? A hungry "lion" devours the quarterback from the opposing team cause him intense pain he will feel for weeks or months and 80,000 people at the stadium cheer with euphoric joy. I don't get it. There is a man prostrated on the ground feeling intense pain - why is everybody cheering? Millions upon millions at home also cheer and get excited as human beings physically torture each other.

Do you ever lie? Almost EVERYBODY does. Isn't THAT something nice to fix? How often do we make statements that we don't really mean? How often do we do things just to impress others? From what I observe - that is a large percentage of what peopple do and say.

Nurse In Delivery Room: "Mazel Tov Mrs. Rosenberg - It's A Wild Animal"

The pasuk [Iyov 11/12] says עיר פרא אדם יולד - Man is born a wild donkey. WE ARE BORN ANIMALS. PERIOD. וכל מחשבות האדם רק רע כל היום. We are filled with egotism, selfishness, jealousy at the success of others, hatred for people who have harmed us or are different from the way we think they should be, filled with lust for people we don't know or care about but just see on a billboard or on a Dvd, obsessed with food and other bodily pleasures etc. etc. There is a lot of good in us also. We all have a special G-dly soul. We possess many positive qualities as well. But we ALSO have so much to fix. That is the ontological, most primary nature of this animal we call man. [Maybe that is why Chazal say that before Chava came around, Adam tried to make a shidduch between himself and all of the animals. He knew that man is "on the same page" with animals in many areas].

If one denies this then he is fooling himself. To be honest is to spend years peering into the recesses of the soul and fixing the animal and Amalek that resides with me. The power of my G-dly soul can make that transformation. [For some more - see Tanya about the dichotomy of the נשמה אלקית and נשמה בהמית].

Hearing The Cries Of My Brothers And Sisters

If it was 1943 and I was sitting pretty in America and could sleep soundly at night despite what I knew about in Europe - then something is VERY wrong with me. Sorry to say it but there are many Jews suffering today as well. How many people are writhing in pain now in the oncology ward of Mount Sinai, Long Island Jewish, Hadasa and Shaarei Tzedek. Do we feel their pain? Do we think about ways we can lessen their pain? How is it possible for people to have time for all of the nonsense that is facebook etc. when there is so much to be done to alleviate the suffering of others.

This Pesach - thousands of thousands of Jews are going to be spending TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS on exotic vacations. I am in favor of simchas Yom Tov. But what about the thousands upon thousands upon thousands that won't have enough money to buy the basics? If people were giving the same amount of many to the poor as they are spending on the vacation then I accept it - but I suspect that not everybody is. Yes, hitting another Jew is a serious aveirah but it is also not a big mitzva when one is blind and deaf to the suffering of others. People are suffering and if all of those who could alleviate their suffering would do so there wouldn't be a person in the entire Jewish people whose suffering wouldn't be alleviated considerably. I go to simchas and for just what the BAND is costing a number of destitue families could be helped for YEARS. Do they really need Daskal AND Dachs AND Gabbay for the chosson and kallah? That doesn't mean that we shouldn't have music at our simchas. It DOES mean that we should be more sensitive to the suffering of others and think of ways to best allocate our funds to do so.

So we can say about the yeshiva bochrim in the aforementioned yeshiva - "Shame on you" but what about ME? Don't I have areas of my life which scream "Shame on ME"? I don't know about you sweet friend but I know FOR SURE that I have many such areas. I am not going to fix those wayward boys but I can certainly fix myself.

What about lashon hara?! According to Chazal, lashon hara is LIKE KILLING SOMEONE. Yet we speak and often enjoy hearing it as well. We go to Jewish news sites and blogs that are filled with lashon hara knowing full well that we will hear some and go back for more the next day. Why?

Create A New Person

 עיר פרא אדם יולד - R' Simcha Zissel of Kelm translated "From the wild donkey - man must be born". Our job is to make a mentsch out of ourselves. We do that by learning mussar, chassidus, engaging in a lot of self introspection and being around people who have highly developed spiritual personalities. 

I am not defending the disgusting behavior of people who should know better. I am turning the spotlight to ourselves and trying to determine if we are not also tainted by spiritual deficiencies that behoove us to work hard on fixing ourselves.

That was the short version.

What do YOU think, tyere precious yidden?

Love and blessings:-).

PS - You may share this with anyone you think may be interested. Let something positive also come out of this chilul Hashem...